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Columnists

Angel’s Bits – the Queer Sci Fi Website Tour

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Hi all! I was joking with Scott the other night that we should do a tour of the site, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The QSF site has so many cool features for both readers and writers. Let’s go take a look, shall we? Home Page – houses the blog where we post all the articles, announcements, reviews and so on. In the upper left, you’ll find a pull down menu, and here’s where all the rest of the fun stuff is. :) About – Which you know. You’re here. Though there is … Read more

Angel’s Bits: A Short Rafflecopter Tour

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At least I hope it’s short. We had a request for a Rafflecopter tutorial – so here we go! Rafflecopter is a useful tool for giveaways in that it: Allows your blog visitors to complete different tasks for entries Keeps track of entries for you Randomly chooses winners on the expiration date you set You can set up a single prize or several, a single task to complete (blog comment, page like) or a number of tasks to give your visitors a choice and potentially more entries. You do have to set up an account, and as long as you’re … Read more

Angel’s Bits: To KU or not KU?

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Amazon is the big yellow and purple polka-dot gorilla in the room. There’s no getting around that. Mind you, I admire Amazon in a lot of ways. This is a fiercely competitive company who sinks profits right back into business so they can keep expanding like a supernova exploding in slow motion. It’s one of the largest employers in my state and it’s changed the way we think about commerce in many ways. But we’re only talking about one arm of this giant, Elder-godlike monster today. From time to time, we get questions from authors about Kindle Unlimited and whether … Read more

Angel’s Bits: Panel Chameleon

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(from left to right: Belinda McBride, Angel Martinez, K.C. Burn from the SF panel at GLR 2013) Picture me singing this to “Karma Chameleon.” A lot of our writers and readers attend conferences and retreats large and small throughout the year. With these, we’re often confronted with the dreaded panel decisions. Should I be brave and volunteer for one? Which ones? Are there ones for which I want to be in the audience? Am I going to have seventeen nervous breakdowns before and during the con because of these damn panels? Believe me, I get it. I get nervous just … Read more

Ebook vs Print? Pfffff – move on

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We spent several years (since the late 90’s) in the author/ publishing community talking about ebook vs print – would one or the other survive, which was better, and so on. The answers? Who cares? Ebook is well entrenched in the marketplace. Print books might go away someday, but not anytime soon. Everyone has their own reasons to prefer one or the other or both. The answer’s simple. Offer both. So it’s time to move on into less charted waters. Today I wanted to throw audio out there. Audio books aren’t new. They’ve been available for quite a while, boon … Read more

Ana’s Spoons: Mrs. Claus

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Mrs. Claus

Welcome and thank you for joining Ana’s Spoons, a feature co-hosted with Queer Sci Fi on the second Wednesday of the month. Today’s topic, as part of the holiday fun, focuses on our favorite holiday figure. Come Join the Chat Wait. Mrs. Claus who? Our Christmas lore is filled with references to her husband. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas The examples are endless. In the season of Christmas, Santa Claus rules. In some cultures, it might be Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, or St. Nicholas. But what of the women? Or little girls, for that matter? A … Read more

Angel’s Bits – How Not To Anger the Acquisition Deities

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Getting that story finished is important. Beating it into the best story you possibly can even more so. But guess what? You can have the perfect story and still be chucked off the acquisitions table without ceremony if you’ve ignored your formatting. Way back when we all still used typewriters, formatting was more difficult from a technical standpoint, but more standardized. There was only so much you could do with even a fancy-schmancy typewriter. We all learned one way, and that’s how we did it. Even some of the younger peeps who learned to type on computers were still being … Read more

Angel’s Bits – Who Are You?

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QSF membership has a large percentage of authors. My acquaintances online, friend lists, contacts, are in large part authors. I know a lot of authors. Except that I don’t. All of these names in lists and feeds and such don’t always have any associations for me. I look at posts in my Twitter and FB feed and think, who are you? This is bad. So bad. Not necessarily for me (though I do worry about my memory some days) but for the authors I can’t place. Authors get a lot of advice thrown at them about branding and, yes, this … Read more

Ana’s Spoons: Female Characters in Harry Potter

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Today is our monthly FF takeover of the QSF site. :) Here’s Ana‘s kick-off for the discussion today: I don’t like Harry Potter. No, that’s not exactly correct. I’ve read all of the books multiple times, visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and indulged in some top-secret fan fiction involving Professor McGonagall and her cane. (I write kinky spanky stories, and the one after-the-fact mention of an expected caning fueled many a happy secret fantasy.) I love Minerva McGonagall. Plus, the woman can change into a cat and go where she wills. What’s not to love? … Read more

The Midweek Mingle: A Question of Barriers

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Just like last week, this isn’t going to be so much of me trying to give advice. This is something I hope we can talk about, and something I hope I can get people thinking about. I’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming after I get back from Sasquan (Wish me luck that I won’t die!). Now, I’m not exactly an old hat in the industry. I’ve been at it since 2010, and I’m embarrassingly young to be an SF/F writer (No exaggeration: it embarrasses me. I have to imagine most 23 year olds don’t just hope to suddenly be … Read more